David Didau is Senior Lead Practitioner for English at Ormiston Academies Trust and a freelance writer, blogger, speaker, trainer and author. He started his award-winning blog, The Learning Spy, in 2011 to express the constraints and irritations of ordinary teachers, detail the successes and failures within his own classroom, and synthesise his years of teaching experience through the lens of educational research and cognitive psychology. Since then he has spoken at various national conferences, has directly influenced Ofsted and has worked with the Department for Education to consider ways in which teachers' workload could be reduced.
Read this article on the 3 reasons why you need to buy The Secret of Literacy.
Read this article on David Didau's journey to becoming an edu-sceptic in Schools Week.
On this episode of the Mr Barton Maths Podcast, Craig Barton speaks to David Didau.
Click here to read David Didau’s blog.
Armando Di-Finizio has, over the course of his career, taught in seven schools in deprived areas of London, Bristol and Cardiff. With a guiding conviction that every child can go on to flourish in life, Armando has successfully led three schools from being among the lowest performing in the country to achieving outcomes well above expectations. Armando’s innovative practices have been successfully applied in the many schools he has worked with and supported over the years.
A teacher and educationalist, and former co-owner and director of Pivotal Education, Ellie Dix has been obsessed with board games from an early age. Ellie firmly believes that board games have positively influenced her ability to solve problems, manage failure and experiment with multiple paths to success ' and she now puts her teaching skills, understanding of behaviour and experience with gamification to use by helping parents to introduce board games to family life.
Hear Ellie talk about her book below and visit Ellie's You Tube channel to find out more about her work.
Fortunes, not Feuds: 7 essential tips for playing board games with family'
13 ways playing board games benefits your child'
The Parenting Show Episode 141
Click here to read Ellie Dix’s blog.
As a teacher, leader and teacher trainer, Paul Dix has been working to transform the most difficult behaviour in the most challenging urban schools, referral units and colleges for the last 25 years. In addition to working directly with schools, Paul has advised the Department for Education on the Teachers' Standards, given evidence to the Education Select Committee and done extensive work with the Ministry of Justice on behaviour and restraint in youth custody. Paul is a leading campaigner for the #BanTheBooths campaign (www.banthebooths.co.uk) and is a member of both the IntegratEd Reference Group and the Ethical Leadership Group.
Dr David Dixon was a full-time primary teacher for 15 years before becoming a head teacher for the following two decades. In that time, he promoted the twin causes of environmental education and sustainability, which formed the central ethos of his schools. David is now a freelance education consultant, specialising in curriculum and leadership and helping individual schools to link sustainability with school improvement more generally.
Dr Eleanor Dommett is a Senior Lecturer in Biological Psychology and Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, part of King's College London. Her research focuses on models of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and mechanisms of action of therapeutic drugs in this condition. She has conducted research at Sheffield University, Oxford University and the Open University and has taught at a variety of institutions. She is currently teaching on the BSc Psychology at King's and has a special interest in technology-enhanced learning.
Chris Dyson was the proud head teacher of Parklands Primary School in Seacroft, Leeds for over eight years. Having been raised in a single-parent household, receiving free school clothes and free school meals himself, Chris' connection between his early life and that of Parklands’ pupils is rooted in common experience. He is now Deputy CEO at Create Partnership Trust, and believes that education is the key to making the future brighter.
Patrick Merlevede is an internationally recognised specialist in the areas of talent management and emotional intelligence. Based on his own experience in these fields, he founded jobEQ.com, a cloud based service providing tools for assessing work attitude & motivation, values & organizational cultures and competencies. At the time of writing, jobEQ's tools were available in 18 languages and were being used by consultants, trainers and coaches in over 30 countries.
As trainer, modeller and author he was the first to make the link between Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and emotional intelligence. The result of the integration of these 2 fields has been written down in 7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence (2001).
Mastering Mentoring & Coaching with Emotional Intelligence (2004) focuses on upgrading mentoring and coaching approaches with concepts from NLP, emotional intelligence as well as the tools developed by jobEQ.
More recently he contributed a chapter to Innovations in NLP for Challenging Times (2011), outlining jobEQ's framework.
In 2014 he wrote Talent Management: A Focus on Excellence - Managing Human Resources in a Knowledge Economy. This book is based on the experience of jobEQ's customers, covering applications such as recruiting & assessment, training & coaching, team building & leadership and changing organizational cultures (see http://bit.ly/TMbookjobEQ).
Patrick continues to consult organizations in these areas, and coaches an international network of consultants and trainers who use the jobEQ principles and tools. He can be contacted through www.jobEQ.com
For more information, see the professional profile on LinkedIn.
Dr Judy Pearson is a free spirit, pursuing all the things she loves to do. After decades of working as a project manager, employee assistance program provider, and a psychotherapist, today she is an author, freelance writer and copy editor, She has published four books (three with Crown House Publishing Ltd.) and over 200 articles, reviews, and interviews in magazines, newsletters and blogs.
She is currently a co-editor for the Trafalgar Chronicle, the international research journal of The 1805 Club; copyeditor for the online International Journal of Naval History of the Naval Historical Society, Washington, D.C., and a frequent contributor to the newsletter for the Naval Order of the United States. She works privately with non-fiction authors to edit and refine their manuscripts and with publishers to edit galley proofs.